Commission Explosion

If only “pay for performance” meant just that. It doesn’t… not by a long shot. Much of what’s called pay for performance is more accurately described as “pay for some of the performance we believe we can directly track from the delivery of an impression through to an immediate purchase.”

The difference is enormous, and it’s creating systemic, long-term problems for marketers and advertisers alike. We must, as an industry, put pay for performance in context while we still have time to preserve the value it can offer online marketers.

Pay-for-performance advertising is a tool to accomplish a job. Marketers have myriad business and marketing objectives they can leverage the Internet to accomplish. For some, pay-for-performance advertising is the right tool. Affiliate programs, paid search, online retail, straight direct marketing, barter deals, and monetization of remnant inventory are all objectives that can be well served by pay for performance. Yet pay-for-performance implementation extends far beyond these objectives into campaigns with goals best accomplished with other tools.

The assigned head team or individual responsible for your companies Facebook profile (often you) launch the companies Facebook profile with big hopes, after-all, all you have to do is make posts about events, news and post some cool pictures like you do with your own Facebook page, Right? Wrong.

Above is an example of a post gone wrong. GREAT post, very informative and useful but it doesn’t direct the viewer or link to the website or location off Facebook.

Content, articles, tips, news or information should always first be posted on the companies own hosted blog, or company web page and then the link should be shared via a Facebook post. That way you still ‘own and control’ the content, and will over-time receive the maximum benefit of the post you shared with your FB fans.

What happens if Facebook goes away? Highly unlikely anytime soon but there is a chance you may lose access to a profile or some other event beyond your direct control in the future that could mean that all that content you fed Facebook would be down the drain.

You can either build content FOR Facebook or, build content for your company and then share it with Facebook liberally. Doing the first method insures that the only one to truly benefit from the content will be Facebook. Building and posting content to your own website, a blog on your own domain and then linking to that content as a Facebook post benefits both you, your potential customer and yes, Facebook.

Let’s covers some other ways you are probably doing posts wrong. Images! Everyone loves images on Facebook pages and with the new Facebook Timeline pages images are a necessity for the page to be engaging.

Are you watermarking your images? Don’t lose potential traffic from a clever, whimsical or beautiful photo that get’s passed around virally. Above is an example image watermarked using Google Picasa Editor (free).

Make sure you keep control of your content, first-and-foremost and then share it with your social media outlets. What are some ways that you believe most are doing it wrong?

Beginning this month many business owners will be surprised when they start receiving new tax forms issued by their credit-card and online-payment processors which are intended to keep businesses from hiding income.

Of course, the amount on your statements likely don’t account for the actual amounts received, less fees, credits and chargebacks. It’s going to be a confusing nightmare no-matter how you look at it but the law it is so we will adapt.

Going forward be aware of this new challenge and adapt accordingly. A wonderful reference article from Business Week about the new tax form that I found insightful can be found by clicking here.

If you have had your existing web server for more than 2-3 years you may want to double check to insure you are receiving the best value you can. As computer and server prices drop, new server equipment is brought online and competition builds among webhosting companies prices are dropping to historically low prices.

In a recent check our own server would be $70.00 a month less if we simply provisioned a new server account with our existing host Blue Bayou and migrated the domains from the old server or, we could get an entirely new Linux server offering nearly four times the storage space, four times the RAM and a significantly better OS core for about $6.00 a month less then we are paying now. For us, an upgrade is in-order (so look for a faster Commission X) soon.

As an affiliate you know how much speed is a factor. Lest we forget that Google also considers page speed as a major factor according to search engine land.

Most webhosts that I checked with were unable or unwilling to offer any type of re-rate staying put so you have to be prepared to actually leave or to provision a new server. Hinting I might leave got me nowhere, though Blue Bayou did offer me 15% off my purchase to upgrade to a new server.

The time to migrate to a new server can run as little as 60-90 minutes depending on how much data needs to be transferred but it’s basically an automated task with the Plesk Migration Manager assuming you are migrating from a server with a recent version of Plesk installed as well.

When was the last time you compared your server to current product offerings (even from your current webhost)? What do you consider a wide enough dollar gap to go through a new provisioning and migration?

+Nick J. West

A website without an analytics program is useless. Without analytics data you have no idea where your website is or, even where it’s going. A web analytics program tracks your success and, your failures allowing you to steer the ship towards your destination ports.

Making structured changes to your website is an on-going exercise, routine maintenance aside it’s one of those things where a rising tide doesn’t raise all ships, and in-fact can just as easily sink a ship if not done correctly. Analytics help guide you on your journey and insure that you can adequately track your progresses.

Thinking your current course is fine or even worse charting an entirely new course without a map or analytics tracking is ignorance. Were you to encounter trouble you may have already hit a rock before realizing the ship is going down. Dropping an anchor doesn’t always help and may beach or completely sink the ship.

Choosing an Analytics program?

Google Analytics in most cases meets the needs of small to medium enterprises but there are tons of off-the-shelf products ranging from a low-to-high entry cost should you wish to explore your options. Google Analytics is free, but in exchange you are trading off the anonymous data sharing of your companies aggregated traffic data with Google.

Set goals early on to maximize data sets.

At first, data will likely be insufficient to make any concrete determinations however after just a few months you will begin to see patterns begin to emerge.

Setting goals early helps gather valuable data from day one that can be used later on. Set up and run regular analytics reports and make sure everyone in your organization receives a copy once a month or as needed and meet quarterly at minimum to discuss progress and emerging data sets.

Track the number of newsletter subscribers, newsletter unsubscribers, how many visitors reach the desired conversion or landing page and anything you consider to be an action, conversion or subscriber.

Translating the data?

If after you have gathered a few months to a years worth of data you are still not seeing a better picture of your websites traffic and growth patterns work collaboratively with other staff members to understand the data or consider an outside source reviewing your progress and explain how to best use the information at your fingertips.

Basically certain benchmarks should overtime show an increase like average visitor time on site, average depth of visitor visits (how many pages) etc., others like visitor bounce rate should show a steady rate and hopefully and eventually a gradual decline.

Use other tools such as Google Webmaster Tools and Page Speed in conjunction with your Google Analytics data. It’s often more easily digestible and as you grow and learn you can then begin to take advantage of the over 1200+ custom report settings available in Google Analytics to really pull out all the stops.

What do you find to be the most useful aspect of analytics tools? As an affiliate publisher do you find existing analytics tools meet your most pressing requirements or needs improvement? How do you integrate analytics tracking with conversion data for the umpteen million different publisher ad platforms that are in the market?

+Nick J. West

How often should you send to your e-mail list subscribers? E-mail your customers when you have something important or new to share, e-mail them to engage not just sell them and mail your list often enough that they don’t regret signing up or, by mailing so occasionally that they forget who you were or why they signed up in the first place.

App Sumo Rocks! might become my new reply. What does all this have to do with App Sumo? Simple, they have it right on the nail head every time.

App Sumo sends out their e-mail blasts about every 2 weeks with a hugely discounted application, service or software for business productivity or to solve a particular web related problem. App Sumo I assume negotiates these prices in advance and every one of the offers comes with a lifetime refund guarantee “anytime before you die” according to the AppSumo.com website. Recent offer discounts were up to 92% off so they’re nothing to sneeze at.

Now I have not purchased anything from App Sumo so I can’t attest to their fulfillment yet but I ‘just’ know they will offer something I can’t live without in their e-mail newsletter someday so I don’t plan on unsubscribing anytime soon.

Now that’s a powerful tool to have, imagine your customers wanting to remain a subscriber because they know that you fill a need for them even if what you are selling is not an immediate need.

Segmenting your list, offering subscriber management tools where subscribers can control their desired contact frequency are all good to consider using as your list grows.

To begin developing your mailing frequency, focus on delivering quality content with a thoughtful mix of sales material blended in. Like App Sumo consider presenting your content in a unique theme or by engaging one of your organizations more out-going personalities (you?) as the face of your campaigns.

Make sure your subscribers have an option to tell you why they unsubscribed. I often find that most that leave don’t comment but the few that do provide a valuable tool in helping to determine your future mailing frequency.

+Nick J. West

CityDeals, a daily deal Groupon type company located in Salt Lake City Utah suddenly and abruptly closed its doors on Wednesday leaving customers and merchants in the dark.

Customers were briefly being redirected to the DealsThatMatter.com website but customers were not able to access their accounts or to print certificates from their CityDeals.com accounts. A check of number 800-970-8824 is currently a non-working number.

Some local merchants are still honoring the certificates, other merchants who were never paid are not sure they can afford the loss of giving away services or products. Customers are advised to call-ahead.

Owners of Deals That Matter have said they have no affiliation with City Deals however they were apparently in-talks at one point about acquiring CityDeals.com but withdrew from the deal for an undisclosed reason.

A few reviews sited on Google from early August and none are positive. One says it all from the merchants perspective: “Still waiting to get paid for this company on product they sold for me over two months ago. Fortunately, we only ran our ad for two months. When we sign a contract, we expect each party to hold up it’s end.”

Is this possibly an area that the state legislatures needs to look at a bit closer, maybe requiring daily deal sites to maintain a bond or guaranty? I am all for free enterprise but the fast cash in this business model leaves little room for insuring the public trust. Without it, the entire daily deal industry could suffer greatly and or even disappear.

+Nick J. West

Another major retailer is migrating away from GAN. Click here to apply to be a Timberland affiliate.

With Timberland’s move comes more questions about the Google Affiliate Networks high costs, the expense of maintaining a program via GAN and the entry requirements preventing many smaller operators from entering the affiliate field through GAN.

With the resources at their fingertips I am still surprised that Google isn’t doing as much to bring more small businesses into the fold with an affiliate program mechanism. AdWords are being presented as the best option for small businesses when an affiliate program can bring the business owner conversions at a much lower cost and with a shorter learning curve to get a program going.

As a website owner you probably buy traffic in one form or another. Many do so initially by using PPC ads, hopefully they convert into sales for you but for many websites getting traffic is an on-going enterprise with or without conversions.

Recently a number of good resellers have come into play that allow you to buy great ad space, at a huge discount without losing any of the tracking and placement controls you have come to expect.

Resellers and remnant ad space sellers like those listed below allow you to buy impressions for as little as $0.04 cpm which can greatly increase your exposure on a very limited budget, as low as $500 for an average campaign block.

The following are two of the best resources that I have found for quality remnant ad traffic: SiteScout and AdBuyer

An announcement today that CircuitCity.com (revamped) is ending its affiliate program with Google.

This from the e-mail announcement:

Thank you for your continued support of the CircuitCity.com Affiliate Program. CircuitCity.com has made the decision to terminate their Affiliate Program with Google Affiliate Network effective August 15th, 2011.

Google as an Affiliate Network i.e. DoubleClick Performics is obviously an expensive enterprise that even established or large companies have to evaluate on an on-going basis whether or not it is worth the cost and time expenditures.